The biggest secret to successful affiliate marketing is this… It’s all about the pre-sale.
Putting up banners and links will get you some conversions - if you’re lucky. But if that’s your main attempt at affiliate marketing, then it’s a big waste of your time and effort.
People visiting your site (your readers, web visitors) are looking for information. And if you’re doing your job well and putting together great information, then your articles and reviews will be indexed and well ranked by the search engines - making it THAT much easier for these searchers to find your site instead of someone else’s. The more search engine traffic you’re getting, the better.
This is because people WHO ARE MOSTLY READY TO BUY search for reviews and articles about their products of choice. Sometimes they want to see their options for a product category, but often times they just want to justify to themselves why it’s OK to buy that product they really want.
So - they want to see an honest, objective review of a product before they buy it. They want your personal seal of approval. So find great products, provide and honest review with benefits and weaknesses, recommend the product, and offer affiliate links to purchase them.
But what if you don’t like the product you’re recommending? Is that dishonest? Will it still work?
A question plaguing most beginners with affiliate marketing… "Isn’t it dishonest to recommend something you don’t like?"
Of course it’s dishonest to recommend something you don’t actually believe in. And here’s a little secret. If you write a dishonest review, your readers will pick up on that, and they’ll probably move on and NOT buy using your affiliate links.
So here’s a radical solution. Focus on doing reviews and writing articles for products that you LIKE and can actually RECOMMEND.